Friday Video: IndyCar’s Alex Lloyd drives the BRE Datsun 510

We all know why the BRE Datsun 510 rules, but what’s it like to actually drive? In this fantastic video by Road & Track, professional IndyCar racer Alex Lloyd gives viewers a seat-of-the-pants rundown on what makes the car so magical. This is likely the closest most of us will ever get to driving the magnificent beast ourselves, and the ridealong is absolutely soul-stirring.

An interesting opportunity spoiled by some of the usual ‘Mr K.’ nonsense. Katayama had no real say in whether these cars were to have all independent suspension or not, and the mention of the fact that the BRE cars used the 5-speed transmission of the ‘240Z’ ( when the 5-speed transmission was never offered as a stock item on the north American market’s ‘240Z’ ) is a nice irony that will have sailed right over Alex Lloyd’s head. The Japanese market and all other export markets got the 5-speed in the 510 and the S30, and if you want to claim that Katayama was adamant about anything it would be that the north American market would get dumbed down and softened up versions of these cars in comparison to everywhere else.

And this film needed to show more details of the actual car too. We didn’t even get an upskirt peep of the engine bay…